


Forgiveness

by PandoraTheExplorer



Series: Month of Drabbles Challenge 2018 [20]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Forgiveness, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Canon, azula's in a mental institute now, can you imagine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 06:39:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16090133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PandoraTheExplorer/pseuds/PandoraTheExplorer
Summary: Azula contemplates what it means to love and fear.





	Forgiveness

**Author's Note:**

> Day 27 of my 2018 Month of Drabbles Challenge.

Ever since she was imprisoned, Azula expected people to come and apologize to her. After all, she was the prized golden child of Fire Lord Ozai. She was about to become the next Fire Lord. Why would she end up restrained in a dingy little prison (mental institute, they called it) if not for the faults of the people around her?

Mai had to apologize for jeopardizing their entire mission at the Boiling Rock to save Zuko. How dare she claim that she loved Zuko more than she feared Azula? Azula knew for a fact that love was just another extension of fear. Who would ever fear a weakling like her brother?

Ty Lee needed to apologize for taking Mai’s side when Azula subsequently decided to punish her for her betrayal. Ty Lee was supposed to be loyal to Azula first and foremost. Azula had the most power. She was the more deserving of Ty Lee’s love than Mai. Why couldn’t the dumb acrobat see that?

Azula didn’t know if she could forgive Zuko if he came to her begging on his knees and crying. What would she even forgive him for? Going with the Avatar? Taking the throne that was rightfully hers? Being born in the first place? Maybe he should apologize for being so weak. If he were as strong a firebender as she was, Azula wouldn’t have gotten her hopes up for the throne and Zu-Zu wouldn’t have had to forcibly rip it from her like he did.

The former Fire Lady Ursa didn’t deserve Azula’s forgiveness. What kind of woman gives up all her power as the wife of a Fire Lord? What kind of woman gives up the child she pitied and the child she feared to have another child with a commoner? What kind of woman immediately apologizes meekly for her misdeeds when confronted without even a fight? Ursa had tried to apologize before. If she tried again Azula decided she was going to spit in her face.

The former Fire Lord Ozai was the only person that Azula could think of that didn’t need to apologize at all. He was the perfect father and the perfect ruler-accomplishing both positions with an iron fist that shaped Azula into the person she was today. Zuko was an ungrateful little brat, but Azula understood their father. She was ambitious and cunning just like him. It’s too bad that no one else bothered to understand their sentiments.

~

Azula was waiting for her daily appointment with one of the expensive doctors that Zuko insisted on hiring. He said he wanted to “improve her mental well-being,” but Azula thought he probably just wanted to annoy her until she breaks.

Standing beside was a Kyoshi warrior. Azula knew her name was Suki because she was one of the Avatar’s friends who helped him take down her father. They had stopped sending in Ty Lee to guard her last month when Azula grabbed the warrior’s sharp-tipped fan and attempted to slit her own throat with it. Azula wasn’t sure if Ty Lee was the one that refused to come anymore or if it was Zuko that stopped her from coming. She wasn’t sure why that mattered to her.

“Why do you care what my brother tells you to do, anyway?” Azula suddenly asked. Suki’s eyes snapped to her in surprise. Azula almost never talked to the Kyoshi warrior guards unless Ty Lee was there. But today, Azula was bored, and so she decided that she wanted to get back into an old hobby of hers-toying with people’s emotions.

Suki, however, didn’t seem as hesitant as Azula had hoped. That was okay. There was probably plenty of time for Azula to make her upset before the doctor came. “He wants to help you,” the warrior said in that condescending tone that all of Azula’s guards liked to use, “I trust him to know what’s best.”

“Trust him?” Azula snorted, “You clearly don’t know my brother as well as I do. He’s a wimp. Why would you trust anything he wants to do?”

“He’s proven that he can make responsible choices,” Suki replied, “And he cares about how you’re doing, too. I thought I might as well help him, at least as a favor from a friend.”

“Friend?” Azula scoffed, “As if you care about him.”

“I do.”

“Why? He’s so weak. You’re a powerful warrior from some obscure island in the Earth Kingdom. Why would someone like Zuko intimidate you?”

Suki waved her hand. “He doesn’t intimidate me,” she said, “Like I said, I’m helping him because he’s my friend.”

Azula groaned. “That doesn’t make sense!” Why was she getting so agitated about this? “He doesn’t scare you and you still care about him? You can’t love someone if you’re not scared of them!”

Suki stared at her. “What are you talking about?” she finally said.

“I meant what I said!” Azula snapped, “Friendship is just a kind of love, isn’t it? You can’t love someone without fear.”

“Azula,” Suki said gently, “do you really think so?”

“I know so.”

“Okay,” Suki said in her gentle voice. Azula hated her gentle voice. It sounded like Mai or Ty Lee whenever they were trying to pay her a compliment as kids. “Ty Lee’s told me a lot about you,” she said, “Did you used to be afraid of her? or Mai?”

Azula barked out a laugh. “Of course not!” She admired Mai’s skills with her knives and Ty Lee’s chi blocking, but she never feared it. She never even considered the possibility that she might end up on the wrong side of those skills until it already happened.

“Did you love them then?” Suki asked, “Would you say they were your friends?”

Azula felt her face turning red. “Of course they weren’t!” she screamed. Suki flinched but stayed where she was. “They weren’t my friends at all,” Azula declared, “Friends don’t betray me. Friends obey my orders. Mai and Ty Lee meant nothing to me. I wish they’d rotted in prison.”

Suki sigheed in exasperation and Azula was almost tempted to shoot her with lightning. It probably wouldn’t work-they were in too small of a room for her to make a clear shot. Besides, Azula’s hands were tied behind her back-they made sure to tie her hands at all times after she tried to burn herself to death a few months ago. She wanted to say something-anything to win this pointless argument-but the doctor came in.

~

Azula sat in her cell and contemplated. She said she didn’t care about Mai or Ty Lee when talking to Suki, but she knew that she was lying. The fact was, Azula knew there was a part of her that ached to be with those two again. 

As children, they were supposed to be her playmates-girls her age to keep her company while the adults ran things. As teens, they were meant to be her tools-weapons of mass destruction she used to conquer Ba Sing Se. No one meant for her to spill her heart out to Mai and Ty Lee and have them spill their hearts out to her in return, and yet they did. No one meant for Azula to trust these two with her life, and yet she did.

No one meant for Mai and Ty Lee’s betrayals to hurt this much-to hurt so much that Azula wanted to die to stop feeling the pain-and yet it did.

So perhaps she did love Mai and Ty Lee, even if she didn’t fear them like one should while loving someone. Azula thought about all the people in her life that she ought to love.

Children ought to love their mothers, but Azula had decided long ago that her mother was weak and unreasonable. Why else would she be so unhappy with her power and a man she feared and therefore loved so much? Azula thought that she hated her mother, so why did she feel her heart break when her father told her that she was dead? Why did she feel it break a little more when she realized that her mother’s replaced her with another daughter?

A niece should love her uncle. Azula thought that Iroh could be considered a political threat, once upon a time, but it was always hard to fear a man who used to nag her about tea and pai sho every chance he got. So maybe she did love Iroh, if only for his gentle attitude and tea that burned tongues.

A student should love her mentor, and Azula decided that she did hold some fondness for Lo and Li, if that fondness could be called love. Yet Lo and Li were not firebenders. They held no opposition to Azula, and she had no reason to fear them.

Sisters loved their brothers, didn’t they? At least, normal sisters did, when their brother didn’t have to fight them for the throne. She remembered when they were little, when they used to play together and say that they loved each other. Her father had since taught her that Zuko was doomed to be her sworn enemy and competitor to the throne ever since she was born.

But then, she thought, why did she try to comfort him on their vacation to Ember Island a lifetime ago? Why did her heart rate jump when he leapt in front of that lightning bolt during their Agni Kai? Maybe Azula did still care for her brother, even if it wasn’t quite love anymore. But that didn’t make sense. She didn’t fear him at all. Why did she still care about him?

In the middle of the night, Azula hit an epiphany. Maybe to love wasn’t to fear, after all. To love wasn’t to look up to someone more powerful than her in awe, and to treat them well in hopes that they never hurt her. Love was irrational. Azula loved so many people that she had no reason to love-people who held no threat to her-and yet she loved them anyway.

Did that mean…that to fear didn’t necessarily mean to love, either? Azula thought back to when she learned that her father had been defeated. She had been scared-she was robbed of all her power as Fire Lord, and with her father captured, there was no way to get it back.

And yet, she didn’t feel any remorse at the fact that her father was doomed to live out the rest of his days in a cell. She actually felt relieved that he wasn’t going to see her again. That he wasn’t going to watch her handle affairs or practice firebending, and tell her with his piercing eyes that Zuko’s fate would fall on her if she made a mistake.

She didn’t love her dad, then. Azula had always thought that her father was the only person she loved-he was the only person she truly feared. But if she loved all the people she didn’t fear and feared the person she didn’t love, then had she been looking at everything all wrong?

Of course Ursa left her husband and daughter-she feared them so much that there was no more room for love. Of course Mai and Ty Lee would care about each other more than they did Azula-they feared her too much to love. Of course Zuko, even after Azula pose no more threat to his power, would continue to make her see the doctors that he thought would help-somehow, after all she’s put him through as children, he still loved his sister.

Azula stretched in her bed and stared at the stone ceiling of her cell. All the things that people did made so much more sense now. Mai, Ty Lee, Zuko, Ursa-everyone did what they did out of love. It was just as Mai said-they loved each other more than they feared Azula.

And it was Azula’s own fault for making people fear her. She was the one that shot sharp glares or lightning or poisoned words when denied even the smallest thing. She was the one that glared down at everyone when she rose to the top-and made sure everyone gazed up at her, too. She was the cause of her own misery. No one owned her an apology-she owed them.

Well, maybe someone did owe her an apology. Azula decided that she would like to her father apologize for looming over her her whole life, striking so much fear into her heart that she confused it for love. He should apologize for everyone in Azula’s life that he hurt-her mother, her brother, her uncle, and herself.

~

Mai and Ty Lee awkwardly shuffled into Azula’s cell, flanked by two Kyoshi warriors. When Azula requested to speak with them again, she was afraid that they might deny her. After all, all of their previous visits have ended with one or all three of them hurling insults at each other, courtesy of Azula. But it seemed that today they’ve decided to give her one more chance. Good. One chance was all she needed.

Neither of her former friends wanted to start the conversation, so Azula decided to speak first, like she used to always do. “Do you know why I asked you two to come?” she asked. Mai and Ty Lee eyed her nervously. Neither of them spoke.

“I want to apologize,” Azula had to force the last word out of her mouth. The other two girls still didn’t speak, but the wariness in their eyes was replaced by a look of shock.

And Azula did apologize. She apologized for throwing them in prison when she was betrayed. She apologized for making them fear her so much to betray her in the first place. She apologized for toying with them in their childhood. Azula used to see them as her tools, she admitted. They were supposed to be objects she could use to further her own power-hungry purpose. But they weren’t tools-they never were. They were their own people with their own thoughts and personalities that Azula had grown to love. She apologized for not seeing that until it was too late.

When she finished, Mai spoke for the first time during their meeting. “You’ve changed,” she said.

“Yeah,” Ty Lee agreed, “I think you’ve become nicer, Azula…somehow.”

Azula wondered why she changed. She remembered how, in her childhood, she was always striving to be better-no, better wasn’t the right word-she was striving to be more powerful. She would burn cities, topple mountains, just to impress her father, who was the source of that power. Now Azula knew that there wasn’t any power to strive for no matter what or who she destroyed, so there really was no point.

“I want us to be friends again,” she said, biting her lip, “I don’t want you two to be my subordinates like before, though.” That was an unsteady power structured that toppled at the slightest instability. Besides, Mai was going to become the Fire Lady someday and Ty Lee was a valued member of the Kyoshi warriors. Why would they want to serve under her again?

“Sure!” Ty Lee gave her a relieved smile. “Let’s start over. We can be together as equals this time.”

Mai nodded in agreement. “Sure,” she said, “It’s less stressful than having to see you struggle, that’s for sure.”

Azula remembered the party at Ember Island years ago, when Ty Lee tried to teach her how to make a friendly smile. She tried again, but judging by the way Ty Lee burst into giggles and the way Mai smirked, she just ended up making a weird face.

That’s okay, though. Her friends were back. It might take a while for her friends to truly forgive Azula, but she was determined to make it right this time, no matter what.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to headcanon that a few years after canon Azula does get better and spends the rest of her life hanging out at Zuko's palace making fun of him during council meetings like the annoying little sister she is.


End file.
